News

Mother’s 3 years in jail for contacting daughter

Haigh's family are 'reeling from an unexpectedly harsh sentence' (Gareth Copley)

A former racehorse trainer and jockey has been sentenced to three years in
prison after she defied a court order forbidding her from contact with her
daughter.

Vicky Haigh, who, during a bitter custody battle, encouraged the
seven-year-old to say that her father was a paedophile, approached her
daughter after spotting her sitting in her father’s car at a petrol station
near her home in north Nottinghamshire.

Haigh, who was heavily pregnant at the time, subsequently fled to Ireland in
April to deliver her baby.

She feared that Nottinghamshire social services would take her newborn child
into care had she remained in Britain.

At a hearing in November, David Tune, her estranged husband, told Doncaster
crown court that, while he was inside a shop, Haigh had walked to his car,
opened the passenger door and begun speaking to their daughter.